Grapefruit and Elderflower Cocktail

All you need are 3 ingredients and about 30 seconds to whip up this classic “Frenchie” cocktail with grapefruit, elderflower and gin. It’s so simple, yet so refreshing and delicious.

Welp, it’s about that time.

After selling all of our furniture, giving away most all of our books, packing up all my kitchen supplies, and majorly minimizing our wardrobes, we’ve reached the point where it’s time to tackle one final area of our little apartment here in Kansas City before moving to Spain:

Our cute little bar cart. 🍷🥃🍹🥂🍸

Ok, well actually, we gave away the bar cart when we got rid of all of our furniture in June. So we’re really talkin’ about a collection of random bottles hanging out awkwardly on the floor of our dining room right now. 😂 And when I say a collection, I do mean a legit collection. Between combining two household bars when we got married, receiving a handful of awesome gins and tequilas and mezcals as wedding presents, and hosting a bunch of parties and happy hours here this summer (which somehow always leave leftover bottles behind), Barclay and I realized this month there are lots of cocktails here waiting to be made and shared.

So during our final month in KC, we’ve decided to host as many dinners, happy hours, and tastings here as possible to help spread the cocktail love amongst our friends. (<– Which, of course, is totally just an excuse to hang out with friends as much as humanly possible before we go.) In the past week, we’ve had two mezcal tastings and a wine night, which were all delightful. But one of my favorites so far was last Friday night when we had a few dozen people over for a new occasion — “gin night!”

I feel like gin is one of those alcohols that I really enjoy in cocktails, but rarely order when mezcal or whiskey is also available on a menu. And as such, we realized that we had a few nearly-full bottles of gin in our stash that needed to be used up. So we invited everyone over for a gin-only party, and I mixed up big batches of 5 different cocktails for everyone to sample — an earl grey tea cocktail, negronis, gin margaritas (margatinis), G & Ts, and the crowd favorite of the evening, this simple grapefruit elderflower cocktail.

It was actually the easiest of all to make, with just 3 quick ingredients. But everyone absolutely adored it, and many of you asked about it on Instagram, so I wanted to share it with you. (And P.S. — if you’re not into gin, it can also be made with vodka.) So grab a bottle, and let’s mix up a round!

Our little “gin party” cocktail bar. Since most of our furniture is now moved out of the house, we served it up on the plastic little folding tables I use to shoot food photos for the blog. You know, fancy. ;)

This cocktail was actually inspired by a recent happy hour visit to Bluestem in Kansas City, with my friend Kathryne. They had a drink called the “Bohemian” on the menu — featuring gin, elderflower and grapefruit — which sounded refreshing on a warm day. (Although when we googled it, turns out the combination is classically known as the “Frenchie” cocktail.) Whatever you call it, though, it totally hit the spot. And I, of course, immediately wanted to try recreating a version of my own at home.

So I did some fiddling around with the proportions, and ended up landing on just a simple 2:2:1 ratio of gin, grapefruit juice and St. Germain. And it was perfection. Also, when you use store-bought 100% grapefruit juice (I was too lazy to juice the actual fresh fruit), it literally only takes a few seconds to whip one up!

We invited our guests at the party to garnish theirs with a sprig of fresh rosemary, lavender, or sage (courtesy of my friend, Beth’s, garden). And I loved the extra subtle flavor that the fresh herbs gave to the drinks.

Seriously, so simple, and so good.

Whenever we get around to stocking our bar in Spain, these will most certainly be on the menu again soon. 💛

What a great way to use gin! We have a bottle we bought from our favorite brewery, which has also gotten into distilling, and have never used it. So now I have a way to use it. Thank you for posting this.

Yum! I’ve got a bottle of bright gin from Lifted Spirits in the Crossroads that is from their very first batch, and sadly it’s been sitting on my bar (mostly) unused for quite some time now. I’m with you about enjoying gin, but never ordering it whenever there are other options (tequila for me). This is definitely the recipe I didn’t even know I was looking for, can’t wait to try it!

This looks so good. An elderflower cocktail makes it sound extra fancy too! Love gin in cocktails! Not a big vodka fan. AND moving to Spain??? How did I miss this? That is so exciting! We are moving across town and purging our house of stuff has been such a tedious chore. I cannot fathom a move across the OCEAN! How exciting for you all!

An excellent and easy to make drink for sandwich and cocktail night at our house. As a regular reader of your blog, I hope your time in Barcelona is wonderful and free of tension. We are on our way there in two days (right after Canadian Thanksgiving) and I’m concerned about how I will find things when we get there. Thanks for a good recipe. We found it more to our taste with some club soda added. Thanks!

Hey, I’m Ali!

My favorite thing in the world is spending time around the table with good people and good food. So I created this blog full of simple, speedy, and irresistibly delicious recipes that are perfect for sharing with those you love. ♥ more about me »